Printers are known in the art to include spindles to hold rolls of web material that are wound on hollow tubular cores that are removably received on the spindles. For example, a roll of ink ribbon may be supplied on such a core which is mated to and removably held on its particular spindle. Similarly, a second core which is mated to and removably held on its particular spindle may be provided to take up the used ink ribbon by winding the used ribbon on the core.
A spindle may also be provided to supply print media from a roll of media wound on a mated core received over and removably held on the spindle. For example, the print media may be a roll of label stock or other suitable print media wound on the media supply core. Commonly, the label stock may include a series of individual labels or record members releasably adhered via a pressure sensitive adhesive or the like to a release liner or similar continuous web of material. In general, the print media is unwound from the supply core and routed or passed between a platen roller and a printhead, e.g., a thermal printhead, which selectively marks the media. Thereafter, the label is dispensed from the printer or otherwise removed from the liner. As successive labels are dispensed from the printer, an amount of spent liner (i.e., the portion of the liner with the labels removed) accumulates. Optionally, the spent liner may be taken up and/or wound on a second liner take-up core removably held on a mated spindle.
Printers employing various spindles and cores are disclosed in U.S. Pat. Document Nos. 5,833,377; 5,947,618; 7,350,462; 7,350,992 and 2009/072073, all of which are incorporated by reference herein in their entirety.
Typically, the core of the printer that takes-up spent or used material will have a limited capacity for receiving that material, be it spent liner or used ink ribbon or the like. Accordingly, when a take-up core is full, it is removed from its spindle. To continue operation of the printer, the removed take-up core has to be replaced on its spindle. In one option, the removed take-up core may be disposed of or thrown away along with the spent or used material wound thereon and an entirely new take-up core can be used to replace it. This option, however, can be wasteful.
Alternately, the used or spent material wound or otherwise accumulated on the take-up core can be removed therefrom and the same take-up core, which is now empty, can be returned to its spindle. While this later approach may be desirable insomuch as the core can be reused, it presents some challenges. In particular, removing the used or spent material from the core can be burdensome. On one hand, when the material is tightly wound on the core it may be difficult to axially slide or otherwise remove the roll of material off an end of the core. On the other hand, with such tightly wound material, it can be time consuming, messy and/or otherwise undesirable to unroll the used or spent material off the core.
Accordingly, a new and/or improved reusable take-up core is disclosed which addresses the above-referenced problem(s) and/or others.